Archive for face-paint

This is Anna Wilinski reporting in with a ton of pictures of my face painted! This post will hopefully be a good one for those that are new to using rainbow cakes, and for those of you with some experience using them. All of the designs were done with Global Rainbow Cakes and used a slightly different technique for each so that you can create a variety of eye masks and full face designs with your rainbow cakes.

Starting with the green Everglades Monster, I kept the dark colors on the outside and the yellow in towards the center. I added a little yellow to help create the eyebrow arch and the eyelid highlights.

I did the same thing for the Kenya Fox’s cheeks, but I flipped the sponge to make the ears. I also did a dark to light gradient down the nose.

For the Caribbean Mask I flipped the sponge for the forehead area, and I pinched the sponge to make smaller bottom wings, and fanned it out a little for the upper wings.

To create the Maui Mask, I held the sponge so that the gradient over the wings shot out towards the temples. This showcases more of a rainbow effect diagonally coming from eyes.

For the New Delhi Butterfly I held the sponge and fanned it across the top and bottom eye lid, with the wings meeting at the inner corners and outer corners of the eye.

The French Quarter Mardi Gras Mask uses the same fanning technique, but includes a little sponge press in the middle of the forehead, and the wings connect up at the top of the bridge of the nose, making a full mask.

The Spain Cat was really easy, after sponging in a light yellow base in the middle, I just went around the edges keeping the darker colors on the outside of the face. The Mojave is like the Spain Cat in reverse, with the darker edges around the bottom half of the face.

For Provence, I used the Splash Pointed Petal Sponge to make these skinny wing sections with pointy tips. I squeezed the sides of the sponge to do the really skinny wings coming up and out from the sides of my eyes.

If you are looking for a vibrant palette of pressed powders to dress up your work look no further. Elisa Griffith, world renowned makeup artist, face artist and instructor created the Color Me Pro Palette. Elisa was born in Italy and is a proud mother of 3. Her work has been featured in The Southern Living Oklahoma Wedding Magazine 2015. Elisa chose her favorite most vibrant pressed powders and combined them in a perfect versatile palette.

The powders go on bright and glide on smooth and are great for blending and creating shadows. Pressed powders can be applied over white face paint to ensure a bright application that pops or pearls can be used over your matte face paints to jazz them up. Powders can help keep your design intact for prolong wear during hot summer days when working with sweaty kids. The Color Me Pro Palette is also great for makeup lovers. The mixture of matte and pearls means you can make that dark luxurious smokey eye or a shimmery golden beach look. Beauty makeup, theater makeup, cosplay makeup, drag makeup or just everyday use, this palette has you covered. When you are using the Color Me Pro Palette during face painting or to cover a large area I recommend using a smoothie blender to apply the pigments. Smoothie blenders are able to pick up a lot of pigment for a heavier coverage. For smaller jobs or when you are using powders as eye makeup the Royal petal brushes or other makeup brushes can be used to pick up the pigments. Overall this palette is a great addition to any kit!

Article By Catriona Finlayson — I got into this as a science teacher working in zoo education. Horrified by the quality of their face painter, my first attempts began on hectic zoo days, and then progressed to busier County Fairs. Moving to Hong Kong in 2006, I painted at my first kids party; 100 guests was normal, and luckily not my first shot at big crowds.

Now HK Youth Arts Foundation (YAF) and I paint at the annual International Rugby 7s. Roughly 40,000 people turn up daily in fancy dress. During event week, we primarily paint faces, and then body-paint fans during finals weekends. The Rugby hires us; all money taken in goes into the Rugby’s Charity boxes. We are a huge part of the atmosphere; we’ve been front page of the national papers at least once every year during the event, and our art (or us working) are the press’s favourite non-sporting shots and TV fillers.

Over the years we tried everything, and this is my advice, which I’ve transferred to similar events in the UK:

Training:
We use a fairly large crew of artists, all mostly untrained in face painting. However, YAF uses these same artists at all their massive events, which helps. After teaching them the basics, each artist has design photos, stencils and a kit to practice with. Stencils are a great help when trying to reproduce high quality team logos fast and will help you cut the queues. Make sure you get permission to copy team logos and don’t cut them too fiddly or they’ll rip. Hot-pen stencil cutters and Mylar are a must!

Designs:
We have to offer face designs supporting the 28 international teams, as well as ‘normal’ ones. We settled on a scale, from fast and small, to bigger and more time consuming.

These are examples of designs that we offered from cheapest to most expensive:

Rugby ball – A stencil with rainbow or flag and team colors sponged through (Some details added by brush).

Full face – Team and country related or normal. ‘Awkward’ requests get sent to me. 2012’s most memorable was a man wanting a boxing T-rex fighting a ninja….

Body-paints – Chest or tummy, torso (40 mins for flags, fake shirts etc), full body (90 mins for tiger or avatar etc). I have stencils for anything I can think of to speed this including stars in many shapes and sizes. Some book times, others get sent to me from the queue. They get what’s possible in the time they pay for. I start when gates open at 6am; face paint teams start at 8am.

Get creative – Work flag or team details into a flowery or sparkly design and more ladies will choose it!

Set up:
I mainly import Snazaroo Face Paints for this type of set up. Each artist has the same kit, set up the same way, so they can swap tables without confusion if needed. I make large split-cakes in 75 ml Snazaroo pots – painters get through several each daily. Keep twice as much spare black & white, and 1/3 more red & blue spare – those are the most used! Snazaroo electric blue is in nearly every flag, and looks better than matt “classic” blue. Invest in larger brushes – most flags don’t need fine detail and small flat brushes the correct size to do flags’ stripes in one stroke so it helps speed you up!Spare supplies (and valuables) stay in waterproof crates under each table.

We each have laminated sets of the displayed designs, with added pictures of the flags and team logos in case people want us to elaborate on them.

We moved stalls around the 1st year, settling with 3 on different levels, near food outlets. Work out how best to arrange furniture to get people through without bumping artists. Designate someone to empty dirty water buckets and refresh clean water.

Wear comfy, washable shoes! By the end of the day, you will have had face paint and the occasional beer or soft drink splashed on your feet which is why I prefer wearing rubber wedge sandals. I dump water on them if they get yucky and they dry quite fast.Team shirts with ‘FACE PAINTER’ in big letters front and back advertises us and occasionally lets us skip bathroom queues.

Queuing:
We’ve tried tickets and offered booking times but only queuing really works. Design boards and signs with ’30 mins from here’ to help people in the queues judge where they are, what they want, and if they’re willing to wait. Once paid and given a ticket with payment details, the next ten customers to be painted are given seating space until they are called. Artists collect the tickets which helps avoid freebies and gives us an idea of who painted what. Volunteer queue managers also take money and help choose designs. You need someone like this so you can concentrate on painting!

Artist Comfort:
In HK staff meal boxes are expected, with water crates. You might queue for the bathroom your entire break, so handy food helps! We rotate breaks and make sure we go on time, you have to take them – soldiering on won’t be appreciated by your body, or clients if you get tired and cranky.

Closing:
We work 8 am-6 pm minimum, leaving early during finals if quiet. Stall managers stand at queue ends turning people away. Large closing signs help, with free glitter squirts.

You can only paint as fast as you can so don’t worry about long queues. If clients wanted everyone painted they’d hire more of us! People mainly want team spirit on fast so you can’t waste time making things ornate – stencil it on and let them go cheer, drink and be merry!

If you really want to take your face paint designs to the next level, then you’ve got to be using the right tools. And to make your designs extra special, I recommend you try Diamond FX Metallic face paints.

Unfortunately Metallic face paint colors can not be seen properly on any screen, computer screens just don’t do them any justice at all! But I’ll do my best to describe it for you…

And if you already use them, and know how amazing they look compared to the standard colors then leave a comment and share your thoughts and opinions!

The Metallic face paints create a beautiful “pearl-like” finish to your face paint designs due to its pearlized pigments. I love using Metallic face paints on fantasy designs for both boys and girls.

We’ve finally done it, we’ve started selling professional face paints in a one stop shop for all your Face Painting Supplies!

I’ve personally gone through and hand picked products that I know you’ll find a good use for. And boy did I have some fun! You’re gonna love it! 🙂

We’ve also got face painting brushes, sponges, and body art stencils!

But I’m excited about the clown makeup & accessories, Halloween face paints, costumes and special effects (SFX). They’re really wicked! If you’re looking for a way to add another dimension to your face painting next halloween, you’ve just got to check out the special effects (SFX) section.

And remember the post I wrote last, about face painting alternatives? What to do when you can’t face paint? I mentioned you should do things like provide temporary tattoos, glitter and stickers…well you can find an awesome range of those items here, that’s for sure!

But where to sit? And where to put your paints? Don’t worry, I thought of that too. There’s a section where you can find fold up chairs and tables for your face painting booth.